Victoria may be queen of the track but Britain's top cyclist was not amused by the BBC's snub

"Ashamed, embarrassed, close to depression," she said.

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She thought she would win a medal but came ninth.

"I wanted to quit there and then. You are on your stage, prepared for the performance of your life, and it was so embarrassing. I wanted to hide under the carpet.

"For days and days I was in tears, a complete mess. All I've ever wanted is to be good at something. And I'd failed. I'd been average. Fourth in the world but ninth on the day. I'd underperformed."

If a week is a long time in politics, three years is an eternity in sport.

Yesterday, after flying back from Beijing where she raced for the first time in the 2008 Olympic velodrome, Britain's outstanding woman sprint cyclist was acclaimed as the Sports Journalists' Association of Great Britain's Sportswoman of the Year.

The BBC failed to nominate her among their long list of 10 for their Sports Personality award last Sunday but, in truth, there is not a woman in British sport in this pre-Olympic year more worthy of recognition.

Three world track titles in three days last March made the case complete.

"I would have liked to have been nominated but the BBC awards are not for achievements, are they? They're personality awards and I'm under no illusions as to where cycling stands in the public mind. So I wasn't gutted," she said.

"What upset me more was that we didn't win the Team of the Year award. That's ridiculous.

"We are the best in the world: seven golds out of the 14 events we entered! I know the rugby team almost won but they didn't do it with the style we did.

She was accompanied to the awards lunch in London by, appropriately, father Max and mother Pauline. Cycling is not a sport Victoria took up but a life she was born into.

Victoria cannot remember a time without bicycles. Grandfather and grandmother met at a cycling club and Max has been racing bikes for 47 years.

While Victoria was training with the British squad in Sydney recently he competed there in the World Masters championships.

Victoria and twin brother Alex, 27, were pedalling a trike almost as soon as they could walk. They were youth-hostelling with their parents on two-wheelers at six and supplementing pocket money with wins in grass-track races at nine.

Max said: "She used to race to please me to start with. I know that because when she was 21 she said: "I'm now racing for me, not for you, Dad".'

His example may have dictated her sport, but in rising to the top Victoria has been lucky with the other men in her life. Steve Peters, the clinical psychiatrist who looks after the minds of Britain's cycling elite, is one. He talked her out of retirement in 2004.

"He put cycling back into perspective for me," she said.

"He convinced me that life doesn't depend on it. It's only sport and people forget any result, good or bad, in time. I know now it's not the be-all and end-all but, at the time, it took me a couple of months to find enjoyment in it again."

At that point, team-mate Craig MacLean offered to help with her training programme.

"Just having someone who understood helped. I felt I was doing it for someone else as well as myself," she said.

Now there is the German, Jan van Eiden, a former world sprint champion. Sprints are one-to-one combat and for 18 months Jan has been on the track with her, toughening her up on the physical side.

"He literally pushes me about, leaning on me, challenging me," she said.

The dangers of riding a fixed-wheeled bike without brakes at 38mph are obvious. Falls on the unyielding wood hurt; a tangle of wheels can injure.

"The first few hard track races I rode I sneaked off to them without telling my mother," said Victoria. So you can imagine Pauline Pendleton's reaction when her daughter returned to their Mildenhall, Suffolk, home this week missing skin down her left side, grazed on her left elbow and full of splinters from a crash on to the Olympic track.

"I was lucky the track was so dusty. I didn't lose as much skin as I normally would," she said.

Mum will have to live with the risks for at least for another year. Beijing is the goal.

"I will try to redeem myself," said Victoria. First, though, are the World Track championships in Manchester in March, when she will be going for four titles.

"Anything less than three after this year would be disappointing," she said.